5 The Expedition of Vitus Bering and Alexei Tschirikov

It was from 1697 on that the religious order of the Society of Jesus established missions in the Baja California peninsula, but conflicts with the native population and the rest of New Spain’s colonial society made their existence difficult. Their missions ended in 1767 when the Society was expelled from the territories of the Hispanic monarchy. From then on, the Jesuits missions were taken over by the Franciscans, who, with friar Junípero Serra as their leader, built a dozen missions in California at the end of the 18th century. Over the decades these missions amounted to 21 in Baja and Alta California.

The colonists continuously communicated with Mexico City, from where necessary aid and supplies were frequently received, which made the navigation along the west coast of the American continent well-known and safe. It also led to the reconnaissance of the northernmost coasts, as well as an attempt to block the much-feared advance of the Russians and other nations through that territory.

To accomplish all this, the Spanish Monarchy created the Naval Department of San Blas. They entrusted the general visitor of New Spain, José de Gálvez y Gallardo, with the management of the Port of San Blas on the northwestern coasts of Nueva Galicia.^[1] In his position, Gálvez facilitated the expansion of their domains, improved their trade routes, and tried to stop the incursions of pirates along those coasts. From then on, ships would be built at San Blas, supplies from Mexico City and Guadalajara would arrive there and be sent to Baja and Alta California. From there ships of explorers would depart, as well as those carrying troops, missionaries and settlers to the new establishments and the northwestern territories of the American continent.

It was not until the late 18th century that a series of circumstances would lead the Hispanic monarchy to finally try to colonize the entire North American Pacific coast. All this process led to the founding of a small settlement in Nutka (Canada), which unleashed a diplomatic crisis of great magnitude that was close to leading Spain, England, France and Russia to war.

Since 1761, the Spanish ambassador in Saint Petersburg, the Marquis de Almodóvar, along with other Spanish diplomats, had sent numerous correspondences about Russian movements on the North American Pacific coast, specifically about their interest in actively participating in the colonization of America from the Kamchatka Peninsula.^[2]

The Spanish ambassador reported that an expedition to the American coasts had been organized from Russia in which the Danish commander Vitus Bering, his assistant, and the Russian captain Alexei Tschirikov, participated along with the French Monsieur de L´Ilse. After long preparations for the expedition, it set out in September 1740 with two ships, the Saint Peter and the Saint Paulo, with the order not to separate from each other, although they soon lost sight of each other due to fog and squalls. They sailed southeast to 46 degrees north latitude in search of the Portuguese Joao da Gama, which was the mythical land of Gama that was believed to exist between Kamchatka and the American continent. As they found no sign of the land they were looking for, they headed for the northeast. Both reached the shores of America, but at different latitudes and without any news from each other.

Bering discovered the American coasts after six weeks of sailing. Then he continued navigating with many risks and furious storms. Unfortunately, on November 5th, at an altitude of 56 degrees, his ship was smashed against the coast of an island. Once on land, the sailors managed to save themselves, but Bering died there. It is said that “desperate to return to the men’s trade, he gave up to his melancholy and refused to eat and drink, lacking strength in his old age to console himself in such a sad situation.”^[3] The rest of the crew managed to build a small boat from the remains of the ship and returned to the port of Avatscha.

On the other hand, Captain Tschirikov, after separating from Bering, sailed towards the northeast until reaching 56 degrees. There, in the place that would later become the Russian base of Sitka, he sent several boats with some of his men ashore, but they never returned. On August 27th, after weathering storms, lack of water and scurvy, he managed to advance about 200 more leagues without losing sight of the land,

(…) without having achieved any other advantage along the whole coast than seeing twenty-one leather canoes, each one with a man, with whom he could achieve neither commerce nor communication. Mr. de la Croyere, who was in this ship and died in it, said that the people in these canoes were very similar to the inhabitants of Canada, where he had served 17 years in the troops of France.^[4]

The natives they saw must have been Tlingit, but they were unable to establish any contact with them. Without small boats with which to explore the coast in which they were, the western Aleutians, or being able to replenish the supply of fresh water, the expedition had to return to the port of Avastsha, from which it had left, on October 23rd, 1741.

Once there, Tschirikov was commissioned to set out again in search of Bering’s ship, the Saint Peter. Although he never found it, during that trip he was able to see the island of Attu, the westernmost point of the American continent. Until that moment the Russians had done nothing more than observe the coasts of America but, as the Spanish ambassador indicated then:

(…) there has been no lack of those who have shown that the lands discovered by Bering and Tschirikyov could rightly be called the New Russia, in imitation of New Spain and New England, because although they have not taken possession of them, they can do so whenever they want and there is no monarch in Europe that can get in the way. This is how pretensions are formed.^[5]

   The ambassador from Saint Petersburg also commented that:

(…) if when the two Russian ships were at the height of 45 degrees, instead of changing their heading northeast, they would have followed it straight to the east, they would have arrived very close to California, and, if they had continued to the southeast, as they began to, they could have arrived at one of our ports in America. The land closest to our establishments is the one discovered by Captain Tschirikyov at 56 degrees of latitude, and consequently 13 degrees distant from Cape Blanco, which is at the tip of California.^[6]